Current Events & Exhibitions

Austin, home to many established and emerging artists, is on the vanguard of the Figurative Art Renaissance. Refigured: Radical Realism is a group show featuring some of the best figurative artists in Austin and their newest, most exciting work, including painting and sculpture in a variety of mediums.

CAMIBAart Gallery is pleased to present Glimmers of Time, an exhibition featuring new multi-dimensional paintings and installations by Venezuela-born, Houston-based artist Lorena Morales. Glimmers of Time marks Morales’ second solo exhibition with the gallery.

Continuing her exploration of memories and the effect time has on them, Morales has filled the gallery with vibrant colored rods. Set in groups along the walls, these clear rods are painted to become glimmering lines, some solid, some gradients, and others speckled with contrasting colors. While there are rods grouped on metal plates, there are others mounted directly to the wall. As the viewer approaches the works, the color appears and then disappears much like memories.

In the center of the gallery are gatherings of freestanding sculptures, set in conversation with each other – sharing memories – maybe memories of home or of times past. Visitors are encouraged to weave through these freestanding sculptures and gaze deeply into them. Each is a memory to be told. Do the colors, shapes, or images spark a memory? Memories often feel like fragile fleeting things. The simplest smell, sight, sound, or thought can spark a memory, while the lightest wind can blow it out. With this exhibition, Lorena Morales encourages us to share our memories – to give them life.

Ongoing Exhibitions

Conceived as a way of engaging with artists whose practices include live time-based events, Learning in Public is a series of discrete public performances, collaborations, and community engagements taking place in the gallery from September 22 to October 28, 2017.

Will Squibb was born in 1986 in Cape Cod, Ma. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2008 and has maintained a dedicated studio practice since then in New York City, while participating in various group shows in NYC and Brooklyn. He currently lives and works in the Hudson Valley. His projects oscillate between a range of mediums and modes including video, collage, sculpture, drawing and photography.

Malu Byrne is a sculptor, neon artist, glass carver, and jeweler who was born and raised in New York City by two artist parents. Byrne developed her art education at California College of the Arts, with a focus in glass. Upon leaving college, Byrne founded Abeni, carved dichroic crystal art objects and adornments, with which she explored many collaborative projects that have been recognized in Vogue, The New York Times, and the Hammer Museum. Most recently, Byrne is currently part of a group show called “The Glorious Object” at the Patrick Parrish Gallery in New York, curated by Rodger Stevens.

THE ALLEGORY OF GOOD AND BAD GOVERNMENT is Zoë Shulman’s second solo exhibition with CAMIBAart. Using elaborate geometric symbols to express the virtues and vices of government, this series of twenty hexagon shaped artworks are presented as diptychs in a candle-lit gallery. The exhibition’s largest focal artwork juxtaposes good and bad government, while smaller meditations of the individual virtues and vices line the surrounding gallery walls. Like a religious shrine, the diptychs offer a space for inner transformation, moral enlightenment, and salvation in the face of fascism.

This exhibition provides a vision of America’s democratic republic that is both morally introspective and politically active. Zoë Shulman has translated the fundamental allegoric structure of Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s medieval fresco “Good and Bad Government” into a system of geometric symbolism, conveying a moral American government. Informed by cross-cultural symbols, biblical themes, and the ancient philosophy of alchemy, this geometric symbolism resonates with humanity’s timeless aspirations and fears, prompting the viewer to compare idealisms between the work and their own political reality.

The six of us often sit around on three sofas in a shared studio and talk about this and that. In this sofa room there is a gathering and an unraveling. Between us, there is a knot that makes strength, attaching us with a fibrous thread. There is a conjoining of histories in our relationships. Between us, there is also a knot that is untethered, unraveling, releasing the force of a bond that has let go.

A tied knot and a knot untied carry the same ghost of energy transferred. These ghosts are vestiges of past charged in the present, in the smell of tar, in a fabric structure burnt out, in the once liquid surface of concrete and in the final layer of a print. Between us, we sit with the inquietude of our time, of our history, and of our predicated futures. We consent to receive the tension of how to approach hindsight, and how to nurture a collective imagined future.

This exhibit features the work of printmakers Audrey Danze Blood, Camila Escobar, Valeria Rachel Herrera, Anna McNeary, Kelly Taylor Mitchell, and K. Sarrantonio from the graduate program at the Rhode Island School of Design. They have spent the past year and a half working alongside one another, in a collaborative print studio, turning many voices into one and one back into many.

Join us on Friday, January 19th for the opening of For When the Leaves Grow Cold, but I Still Require Your Shoulder. Our first exhibition of 2018 features Ricardo Vicente Ruiz in a solo show guest curated by Jeffrey Dell. A limited edition chap book publication by the artist, editioned in risograph by Dell, will also be available for free at the opening.

For When the Leaves Grow Cold, but I Still Require Your Shoulder is a suite of paintings rooted in the history and folklore of harvesting seasons in the Southwest. The focus is on the surrounding landscape with tools, animals, plants, and fantastical manifestations as onlookers.

With his explorations of figurative work, Younger attempts to answer societal questions: Are we beholden to the mythology we inherited, be it personal, social, political or otherwise? The friction of our binaries is particularly hot right now. Truth is dependent on perspective and most of us are deeply invested. In this crucible, silence implies consent. Speaking and listening are courageous acts.

Gallery Shoal Creek, in conjunction with PrintAustin 2018, presents an exhibition of prints and drawings by New Mexico artist Karina Noel Hean. Ms Hean will be in Austin for the Opening Reception on the evening of Friday, January 12, at the gallery, located in the Flatbed Building.

Grounded in drawing, Hean explores responses to the landscape. She points out that “the dislocated landscapes in this exhibition are like us, accumulations of experiences, interactions, weather — stacked and layered as sediment revealing residual effects of change. Both the woodcut and intaglio prints and large- and small-scale drawings contain a layering of time, memory, and mark.”

Guest-curated by Paloma Mayorga, the PrintAustin 2018 Invitational: flux examines contemporary manipulations of traditional serigraphy techniques. Featured artists include Essentials Creative, Mirjam Dijkema, Nansi Guevara, and Michael Menchaca. All offer local and international perspectives on the versatility of this medium.

The Elisabet Ney Museum proudly presents AWXAW or Austin Women by Austin Women, a photography show of portraits of Austin women as made by Austin women photographers. It will be part of the PhotoATX Fest, sponsored by the Austin Parks and Recreation Department’s Museums and Cultural Programs Division.

Among the artists featured will be Ave Bonar, Amalia Diaz, Christa Blackwood, Hannah Neal and Erica Wilkins. Each artist shows a unique side of Austin women; all are portraits, none are commercial. All tell of the unique spirit of Austin’s women through their work, their subjects, and their motivations.

Each of the artists in the exhibition I Think We Meet Here is currently in their second year of the Core Residency Program at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. With varied approaches, these artists use video installation to investigate mediated encounters between people.

The title, I Think We Meet Here, describes a proposition not yet resolved, a disorientation in location, a confession of doubt – a collaboration. Though these artists met by chance in the Core Program, their practices have dovetailed in process. In each work, the artists are engaged in a search – for freelance animators, participants on dating/meeting platforms, and monsters. Their videos explore the relationships that emerge as a result of their searches.

Join the Visual Arts Center for the opening reception of Untitled, an exhibition from the Undergraduate Art History Association exploring the relationship between contemporary art and the theory of the past.

The hand-painted reproduction on artisan-made bark paper presented at the Visual Arts Center is the result of a decades-long project by artist Richard Lee Gutherie with Gisele Diaz and Alan Rodgers. The original manuscript, inaccessible for many years until recent digitization, is known to most scholars and Mesoamerican enthusiasts through a 1993 Dover edition reproduction by the same team. These never before exhibited folios, all 76 pages of The Codex Borgia, debut at the Visual Art Center on Jan. 11, 2018 in conjunction with the UT Austin Mesoamerica Meetings conference.

Just Press Print is an international, traveling group exhibition that explores the introduction of 21st century technologies within the discipline of printmaking. The exhibition highlights artistic planning, collaborative practices, and the broadening possibilities for the graphic artifact in the digital age. The exhibition features published prints evolved from collaborations between fourteen selected artists, including the organizer, Paul Laidler, at the Centre for Fine Print Research (CFPR) as part of CFPR Editions.

Just Press Print draws the attention of the audience to significant, yet often overlooked elements of the printing process. Sketches, correspondence, and draft editions highlight the importance of the relationship between artist and master printer, the iterations necessary to achieve the final print, and the archiving and recording process that accompanies the artists’ work. The works on view suggest the evolving nature of digital technology and its potential influence upon established definitions and practices within the field of printmaking.

Relatability, alienation, and the desire to categorize the individual body frames the conversation of Almost Doesn’t Count. Drawing from both their Asian and white backgrounds, Rachel Henson and Emily Lee explore the endless in-between-ness of identifying oneself.

Gold Tape, a show featuring new work from Print students at The University of Texas at Austin, experiments with introducing and interlacing new forms of media with traditional printmaking techniques. Gold Tape will include colorful, curious and interactive printed matter on clothes, sculptures, canvas, pillows, plants. The exhibition will feature a ‘Zine Screen,’ a wall divider of hanging artist magazines that viewers can flip through, read and enjoy.

On Saturday, February 3rd, Wally Workman Gallery will present a solo show by renowned artist Malcolm Bucknall. Bucknall’s absurdist surrealism muddles Old Masters with tid-bits of cartoons, films, home photography and many other fascinations to create his anthropomorphic creatures. Bucknall feels that our observation of animals, as with art, is from the outside. In them we see predator devour prey, lovers join with unembarrassed abandon; we see birth, nurturing, the feathering of nests, death all at a remove from ourselves yet mirroring our own deepest libidinous instincts, hopes and fears. Human-animal imagery has been a constant in art, folklore, religion, daydreams, and masquerade. It takes us quickly and easily to what is deep and difficult in ourselves. Bucknall aims directly at this sweet spot, a concoction of visual imagery that sums up common experience – love, fear, gawkiness, triumphalism, self-recognition.

Davis Gallery is pleased to announce our annual winter group show. The primary intention of In Depth is to study the fifth element of art; space. Artists will demonstrate how positive and negative space interacts and how specific techniques can produce the illusion of depth. Each artist has either created new work for this show, or carefully chosen work from the past, which uniquely recognizes In Depth‘s concept. The opening reception will be held on January 20th from 7-9 pm.

Bodies, selves, others, and other selves are presented in unrestricted and unapologetic forms. These figures take up space, and new contexts are laid bare. Representations transcend classic depictions of the human form, investigating perceptions of assumed, controlled, or reclaimed identity. In proximity to each other, the work in Proxemics examines how a body may be critiqued or claimed, presented or perceived.

Olsen is a Danish artist who has been painting since his youth, however, it was not always his primary career path. Following his service in the Danish Air Force, Olsen worked in the telecommunications business for more than 20 years. He recently left a position as CEO of a successful company in order to paint full time. His drive to follow his passion is apparent in his work. Come out to the gallery before the exhibition opens to watch him paint for yourself!

Inspired by the writings of Rimbaud and Victorian mourning attire, Gail Chovan gives exaggerated form to the long deceased by adorning apparitions in hyper-stylized garments and accessories from the past. In the exhibition, Chovan uses fragments and fabrication to enshroud memories, gives form to absence and celebrates remnants as potent vehicles for resuscitation.

For over forty years James Surls has been realizing the visions of his heart and mind into works of sculpture. His sometimes massive sculpture, many of which seem to defy the laws of gravity, have a presence that puts the viewer in mind of an illusive moment now seen. Surls, who often works in steel and wood, imbues this work with a craftsmanship that is felt in the hand-cut timbers and forged steel. Alongside the work that stands in the round, he has used his same sculptural tools to gouge and mark into wood to be printed onto paper. His moving from the third dimension into works that are two dimensional has been a constant in his practice. He has embedded the grace of his linear steel lines into the etched surface of copper, these same powerful outlines into wood and his complex network of marks onto stone all for the purpose of being printed as etchings, woodcuts and lithographs. He transforms the edges that we see in the round to another type of edge that ends up defining a new reality. Surls lives comfortably in this edge between dimensions.

ATM Gallery presents an exhibition of new work by the poet and artist LA Warman. Comprised of video, interactive installation, and poetic text, the work explores the relationship of the erotic body to empire.

The cage breaks with the body. The body experiencing pleasure in the cage is illegal. The cage needs the bodies to not experience pleasure. We break the cage with our pleasure. Heteropatriarchal white supremacy is a cage. But, like all cages, this cage is fragile, and they know that. They know a trip, a fall, a gesture, and it is over. Someone sits on the roof and it collapses. That is why they are busy installing and reinstalling a support structure for the cage. But, we see it. We hear it creaking.

This work builds a fragile cage and fills it with pleasure. Things for you to touch and smell and read and witness. We are building an instruction manual with each other. We are making the tools. We are creating it with each other. The only answer is the group. The only answer is each other. We are here together looking towards something else unsure. The erotic is the guide.

Women Printmakers of Austin is an organization dedicated to encouraging people to actively pursue artistic expression through printmaking, and to promote community through increasing public awareness of historical traditions and contemporary techniques.

OLA Gallery kicks off 2018 featuring the interdisciplinary artwork by Jonas Criscoe for First Friday. His collection, Quilitings, feeds off Criscoe’s passion for screenprinting. His pop-americana artwork pulls imagery from airlines, diners, the rural South, Midwestern suburbs, construction, and most importantly quilt patterns – creating a disorienting array of American memorabilia. According to Criscoe, “My work explores how our environments and landscapes are altered by society and nature’s ability to reclaim the spaces and things that we abandon.”

Amassed over the last 35 years, Mexic-Arte Museum’s upcoming exhibition, Fotografía y Nuevos Medios: Selections from the Permanent Collection, explores the plurality of resistance, highlighting varied lineages of Latinx and Latin American resistance. Selected works will reflect upon a range of issues including race, gender, identity, community, civil rights, and cultural praxis. Through different mediums and approaches, these works shift beyond binary paradigms, speaking to the fluidity of life.

Produced in fourteen different studios across the Southwest, the Desert Triangle Print Carpeta exhibition will feature the work of 30 printmakers dealing with themes pertinent to the region, including diverse cultural narrative, border identity, and popular culture. Additionally, three prints on displaywill incorporate augmented reality through Augment El Paso’s self-titled application, which animates the respective works of art.

Rodney McMillian:Against a Civic DeathThe Contemporary Austin – Jones Center // 700 Congress //February 1 – August 26
The Contemporary Austin will present a solo exhibition of newly commissioned and recent works by the Los Angeles-based artist Rodney McMillian(American, born 1969 in Columbia, South Carolina). On view at the museum’s downtown location on Congress Avenue, Rodney McMillian: Against a Civic Death is an immersive installation that fills the entire exhibition space and incorporates paintings, sculptural installations, video, and sound pieces.

Upcoming Exhibitions & Events

Internationally-renowned artist Catherine Lee will be the feature of a new exhibition at the Ney Museum this Spring. An installation based upon her work past and present, the exhibition will be both indoors and outdoors, anchored by her monumental Hebrides #6: Clach An Trushal, which graces the grounds for an extended period thanks to a very special loan from the Contemporary Austin through its Museum Without Walls program. This exhibition will include monumental sculpture, paintings, smaller three-dimensional pieces, and more.

An internationally-exhibited master, Lee’s work reflects time, permanence and majestic nature along with intimate reflections of ourselves.

On Wednesday, February 21, Dr. Louis Waldman will draw on his vast expertise on Italian Renaissance art to discuss the artistic achievement of the period’s most influential artist, Michelangelo. Starting from the artist’s youth, Dr. Waldman will trace Michelangelo’s preoccupation and struggles to master the media of art.

In conjunction with the Museum’s current exhibition, Flight & Fall: Charles Umlauf’s Dualities, Dr. Waldman’s talk will situate Umlauf’s work in a broader classical context in the first of Insights of the year at the UMLAUF Sculpture Garden & Museum.

Nate Otto is an artist from Chicago whose work explores urban landscapes and architecture filtered through his own vision. Mapping, gentrification, development, decay, and the inherent and ongoing change in the urban space are among the ideas he tries to tackle with his graphic, stylized, and simplified drawings, paintings, and murals. Nate has had several solo art shows in Chicago and he has shown his art all over the world. As an illustrator he has contributed at Basecamp, DNA Info, NPR, and many others. He has done murals for Nike, Facebook, interior Define, VML, and many more. He is a graduate of Columbia College in Chicago and he has been a full time artist since 2012.

Benthos, New Work by Haley WoodwardDimension Gallery // 979 Springdale Rd, #99 // February 24 – March 31 // Opening Reception: February 22 from 6-9pm
Benthos is the community of organisms that live on, in, or near the seabed, also known as the benthic zone. This body of work uses these strange and adaptable life forms as influence for sculptural forms.

The People’s Gallery is designed to showcase the work of regional artists and to encourage public dialogue, understanding, and enjoyment of visual art. Each year, the Cultural Arts Division issues a call for artworks to Austin-area artists, galleries, museums, and arts organizations. This year, approximately 1,300 entries were submitted by more than 320 local artists. The 2018 selection panelists were arts educator and artist Teruko Nimura; artist and Preparator (Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin) John Sager; andartist and Professor of Art, St. Edward’s University Tammie Rubin.

‘Seascapes’ is an exploration of the intrinsic loneliness of humanity, the vastness of the oceans, and the interconnectivity of life with water. This series taps into those subjects and intends to distill the essence of a moment in time and elicit an emotional reaction. The pieces are deeply influenced by geological forces at work such as the breaking of ice caps and movements of the oceans. They explore the feeling of loneliness and how insignificant one can feel in a vast ocean.

Each piece of art is accompanied by a poem that illustrates the artist’s emotions during the creation process. She is inspired by the poetry and beauty of nature. When a new piece is created, it is subjected to different environmental factors as her practice focuses on the process— not just the final creation.

Not Gallery is pleased to present Another Ground, featuring collaborative and independent works by Jack Arthur Wood and Jessica Cannon. Since meeting on Instagram a little more than two years ago, the artists mailed works in process back and forth between Corpus Christi and Brooklyn. They explored shared interests and alternative perspectives. Another Ground grew from the artists’ mutual relationship to landscape imagery as a means of examining personal and collective consciousness.

Each artist worked on the collaborative pieces alongside other projects in their respective studios. With the exception of two in person sessions of monoprinting at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in Spring 2017, the exchange took place through mailings, phone calls, and text messages. The presence of time was deeply felt over the two years as the artists navigated changes in their lives and in the world. Works were added to and subtracted from, and the rapid connections made possible by technology were occasionally at odds with the deliberative process of looking and responding.

In Residual, ICOSA Collective artists Katy Horan and Teruko Nimura interpret the concept of hauntings, from unresolved personal and societal experiences that resonate in our present day to variations on the traditional ghosts and spirits found in superstition and folklore. Be it Katy’s sinister figures and Appalachian Haints or Teruko’s investigation of the fear induced “othering” seen in the Japanese American internment, these artists engage the specter of death, grieving, and threat from various points of view. This two person exhibition will include an array of drawing, painting, sculpture, and multi-media installation inviting the viewer to reflect on the echoes of the past that live among us still.[/column]

Photo/Montage (12×12) invites established, local artists to step out of their usual boundaries to engage in a complex dialog with a given concept. Each participating artist worked with the same set of twelve prints from Pizzi’s recent photography to create a unique collage/assemblage using at least one element from all the twelve images, with no other restrictions or guidelines about form, size or aesthetic purpose. The collaborators involved are diverse in background and vision, and include visual artists Catherine Lee, Michael Anthony Garcia, Shawn Smith, Maya Lawrence, w. tucker, Peggy Weiss, and Steve Wiman; composer Graham Reynolds; graphic designer DJ Stout; architect Emily Little; writer Teresa Elliott; and photographer/filmmaker Robert Ziebell.

This project’s purpose is to engage the ideas of established artists to develop twelve unique works based on the same set of twelve images from Rino Pizzi’s body of work. It is an experiment in variations on a theme, as conceived and imagined through the eyes and aesthetic model of a diverse group of cultural leaders who have been encouraged to go beyond their specific media and establish an exchange with the medium of photography, which in this case was treated as raw material rather than complete works. Its focus will be on bringing together outstanding creative personalities in our community to engage in a conversation about art and collaboration.

Paved Paradise Women & Their Work // 1710 Lavaca St. // March 10 – April 19 // Opening Reception: March 10 from 7-9pm

In Paved Paradise, Julie Libersat explores symmetry and patterns within the landscape of late capitalism. Using the shopping mall and the parking lot as formal and conceptual frameworks, the interactive video installation explores a suburban vernacular that presents consumption as a modern form of worship. Paved Paradiseis part of an ongoing series of parking lot mazes executed through various virtual and physical mediums. Libersat explores everyday landscapes and infrastructure to reflect on our cultural, social, and economic orientations. Paved Paradise presents the shopping mall as a temple of the golden age of capitalism and the parking lot as a labyrinth. Exhibition on view through April 19, 2018.

On Saturday, March 10th, Wally Workman Gallery opens it’s 4th show with Austin artist Helmut Barnett. Starting in a loft studio on what was in 1975 a quiet Congress Avenue and now working in an 100 year old house on the east side, Barnett has been a part of the evolving Austin art community for over 40 years. This upcoming show exemplifies the range of Barnett’s talent, featuring geometric and organic forms on large canvases as well as large scale collages incorporating found material.

Art Weekly Cover Image:

Weekly Reads:

WASHINGTON — With the unveiling here Monday at the National Portrait Gallery of the official presidential likenesses of Barack Obama and the former first lady, Michelle Obama, this city of myriad monuments gets a couple of new ones, each radiating, in its different way, gravitas (his) and glam (hers).

Ordinarily, the event would pass barely noticed in the worlds of politics and art. Yes, the Portrait Gallery, part of the Smithsonian Institution, owns the only readily accessible complete collection of presidential likenesses. But recently commissioned additions to the collection have been so undistinguished that the tradition of installing a new portrait after a leader has left office is now little more than ceremonial routine.

The present debut is strikingly different. Not only are the Obamas the first African-American presidential couple to be enshrined in the collection. The painters they’ve picked to portray them — Kehinde Wiley, for Mr. Obama’s portrait; Amy Sherald, for Mrs. Obama — are African-American as well. Both artists have addressed the politics of race consistently in their past work, and both have done so in subtly savvy ways in these new commissions. Mr. Wiley depicts Mr. Obama not as a self-assured, standard-issue bureaucrat, but as an alert and troubled thinker. Ms. Sherald’s image of Mrs. Obama overemphasizes an element of couturial spectacle, but also projects a rock-solid cool.

It doesn’t take #BlackLivesMatter consciousness to see the significance of this racial lineup within the national story as told by the Portrait Gallery. Some of the earliest presidents represented — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson — were slaveholders; Mrs. Obama’s great-great grandparents were slaves. And today we’re seeing more and more evidence that the social gains of the civil rights, and Black Power, and Obama eras are, with a vengeance, being rolled back.

On several levels, then, the Obama portraits stand out in this institutional context, though given the tone of bland propriety that prevails in the museum’s long-term “America’s Presidents” display — where Mr. Obama’s (though not Mrs. Obama’s) portrait hangs — standing out is not all that hard to do.

The National Portrait Gallery collection isn’t old. It was created by an Act of Congress in 1962 and opened to the public in 1968. (The Obama unveiling is billed as part of its 50th birthday celebrations.) By the time it began collecting, many chief executive portraits of note were already housed elsewhere. (The collection of first lady portraits is still incomplete; commissioning new ones started only in 2006.)

There are, for sure, outstanding things, one being Gilbert Stuart’s so-called “Lansdowne” Portrait” of George Washington from 1796, a full-length likeness packed with executive paraphernalia: papers to be signed, multiple quill pens, a sword, and an Imperial Roman-style chair. Even the clothes are an 18th-century version of current POTUS style: basic black suit and fat tie. As for Washington, he stands blank-faced, one arm extended, like a tenor taking a dignified bow.

Uninflected dignity was the attitude of choice for well over a century, with a few breaks. In an 1836 portrait, Andrew Jackson, a demonstrative bully, sports a floor-length, red-silk-lined Dracula cloak and a kind of topiary bouffant. (A picture of Jackson, one of President Trump’s populist heroes, hangs in the Oval Office.) Abraham Lincoln, seen in several likenesses, is exceptional for looking as if he may actually have weighty matters on his mind. Most of the portraits that precede and follow his are pure P.R.

This continues well into the 20th century. In a 1980 painting Jimmy Carter trades a black suit for a beige one. How revolutionary is that? And there’s a Casual Fridays vogue: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both go tieless for it. Under the circumstances, Elaine de Kooning’s 1963 portrait of John F. Kennedy, a fanfare of green and blue strokes, hits like a boost of adrenaline. Rousing too, though not in a good way, is a big head shot image of Bill Clinton by the artist Chuck Close. Using his signature mosaic-like painting technique, Mr. Close turns the 42nd president into a pixelated clown.

Mr. Obama has much better luck with his similarly high-profile portraitist. Mr. Wiley, born in Los Angeles in 1977, gained a following in the early 2000s with his crisp, glossy, life-size paintings of young African-American men dressed in hip-hop styles, but depicted in the old-master manner of European royal portraits. More recently he has expanded his repertoire to include female subjects, as well as models from Brazil, India, Nigeria and Senegal, creating the collective image of a global black aristocracy.

In an imposingly scaled painting — just over seven feet tall — the artist presents Mr. Obama dressed in the regulation black suit and an open-necked white shirt, and seated on a vaguely thronelike chair not so different from the one seen in Stuart’s Washington portrait. But art historical references stop there. So do tonal echoes of past portraits. Whereas Mr. Obama’s predecessors are, to the man, shown expressionless and composed, Mr. Obama sits tensely forward, frowning, elbows on his knees, arms crossed, as if listening hard. No smiles, no Mr. Nice Guy. He’s still troubleshooting, still in the game.

His engaged and assertive demeanor contradicts — and cosmetically corrects — the impression he often made in office of being philosophically detached from what was going on around him. At some level, all portraits are propaganda, political or personal. And what makes this one distinctive is the personal part. Mr. Wiley has set Mr. Obama against — really embedded him in — a bower of what looks like ground cover. From the greenery sprout flowers that have symbolic meaning for the sitter. African blue lilies represent Kenya, his father’s birthplace; jasmine stands for Hawaii, where Mr. Obama himself was born; chrysanthemums, the official flower of Chicago, reference the city where his political career began, and where he met his wife.

Mrs. Obama’s choice of Ms. Sherald as an artist was an enterprising one. Ms. Sherald, who was born in Columbus, Ga., in 1973 and lives in Baltimore, is just beginning to move into the national spotlight after putting her career on hold for some years to deal with a family health crisis, and one of her own. (She had a heart transplant at 39.) Production-wise, she and Mr. Wiley operate quite differently. He runs the equivalent of a multinational art factory, with assistants churning out work. Ms. Sherald, who until a few years ago made her living waiting tables, oversees a studio staff of one, herself.

At the same time, they have much in common. Both focused early on African-American portraiture precisely because it is so little represented in Western art history. And both tend to blend fact and fiction. Mr. Wiley, with photo-realistic precision, casts actual people in fantastically heroic roles. (He modifies his heroizing in the case of Mr. Obama, but it’s still there.) Ms. Sherald also starts with realism, but softens and abstracts it. She gives all her figures gray-toned skin — a color with ambiguous racial associations — and reduces bodies to geometric forms silhouetted against single-color fields.

She shows Mrs. Obama sitting against a field of light blue, wearing a spreading gown. The dress design, by Michelle Smith, is eye-teasingly complicated: mostly white interrupted by black Op Art-ish blips and patches of striped color suggestive of African textiles. The shape of the dress, rising pyramidally upward, mountain-like, feels as if it were the real subject of the portrait. Mrs. Obama’s face forms the composition’s peak, but could be almost anyone’s face, like a model’s face in a fashion spread. To be honest, I was anticipating — hoping for — a bolder, more incisive image of the strong-voiced person I imagine this former first lady to be.

And while I’m wishing, let me mention something more. Mr. Obama’s portrait will be installed, long-term, among those of his presidential peers, in a dedicated space on the second floor. Mrs. Obama’s will hang in a corridor reserved for temporary displays of new acquisitions — on the first floor. It will stay there until November, after which there’s no set-aside place for it to land.

If first men have an acknowledged showcase, first women — ladies or not — should too. Better, they should all be together, sharing space, offering a welcoming environment to, among others, a future first female president, and creating a lasting monument to #MeToo.

Austin Art Weekly Advertising Packages

To advertise your gala, member only events, or other fundraising events please contact us at info@artallianceaustin.org for more information on Austin Art Weekly advertising pricing and packages.

Support Art Alliance

Your support through membership, donations, and volunteering enables Art Alliance Austin to grow Austin’s art scene. We connect you to the Austin art community. Join, renew, or learn more about membership here.

Art Alliance Austin is your connection to Austin art.

Art Alliance Austin is your entry point to the Austin art scene. We connect you to the arts in Austin through our weekly listing of exhibition openings, through many events across the year, and through intimate introductions to local gallerists, artists, and collectors. Supporters of Art Alliance Austin are the backbone of our success and allow us to build a transformational model for the Austin art community by providing marketplace opportunities for Austin’s most exciting galleries, art non-profits, and individual artists. We believe Austin should be the most prominent contemporary art city in Texas and through our work, we are building a sustainable vision and collaborative connections to make that a reality.